Being Human
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Is there anything you miss about being human?" A quiet little story that follows after the events of Dead and Gone.


Author's note: This is my first fic in this shiny new fandom and a big "Thank you!" goes to missnyah for reading it through to make sure I didn't do anything stupid. Enjoy!

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"Is there _anything_ you miss about being human?"

We'd been out here in my backyard, just talking, for maybe an hour. The early summer night was getting cool, but it was not at all cold. The breeze had died down around sunset, long before Eric had gotten here, leaving the sky clear, the stars bright. I had turned off the outside lights before coming out to sit, so it was very dark. It was a dark moon phase, too, and I was kind of glad of that. The wounds the fairy twins had inflicted on me were more or less healed over, at least the ones on the outside, but that didn't mean that I wanted anyone to see the evidence of their work.

In the dim light of the stars, I could almost pretend the scars weren't there, almost pretend the awfulness all those weeks ago had never happened. But it had happened. There was still a lot Eric and I needed to talk about, including why he hadn't been there when I'd so desperately needed him, but tonight was not the night for that particular conversation.

I watched fireflies dance in the darkness, a flash of light here, a glimmer there. When Jason and I were little and visiting with Gran for the summer, before our parents were killed in a flash flood (which, as it turns out, hadn't been an accident at all), we'd catch fireflies and put them into a jar with tiny holes in the lid, making a kind of lantern of them. Gran had never let us keep them for very long, because they were living things, after all, and wouldn't have been happy living in a jar. They wouldn't have lived for very long, either, but when you were only five or six (eight or nine, in Jason's case), that didn't really mean a whole lot.

A firefly lit up not three inches from my face and I reached up and gently caught it in my hand. It tickled, walking on my palm, trying to open its wings in my loosely closed fist. When I opened my hand to let it go, it stayed where it was for a second or two, its little butt glowing for all it was worth, and then it took flight again.

I could feel Eric watching me, but he didn't say anything. I looked over my shoulder at him where he lay back on the grass, using his hands for a pillow. Sometime during the past hour he'd taken off his shoes and socks without me noticing; his pale feet glowed just a little bit, below the legs of his jeans. "Not gonna answer me?" I prodded.

There was just enough light from the stars (or my vision was just enough better from all Eric's blood that I'd had recently) that I could see his lazy smile. "Patience, little girl. I'm thinking."

Little girl, my derriere. "Having a senior moment, are you?" I asked him with a sugary smile of my own. Sitting here with him on a sweet summer night, no one trying to kill either of us, not even anyone to bother us, since Amelia was out having dinner with her father, was the first time I'd felt relaxed in… Well, in a very long time. And I knew Eric felt it, too. Maybe we were reinforcing that feeling in each other.

My gaze followed a particular firefly in its rambling course about the yard. I lost it to the woods before Eric finally answered my question.

"Sometimes I miss the sun, the warmth and weight of it on my skin." That surprised me, especially when I thought about the last time Eric had actually felt the sun on his skin. It had burned him terribly; I'd never forget the sound of his screams. "Of course, there is always synthetic sun, just as there is synthetic blood."

He shrugged and fell silent again, became still as only a vampire can be still, and I knew he was trying to remember. I didn't poke at him again and after a time he offered, "I miss beer." His voice was a little wistful.

"Beer?" I turned around so that I faced him, which left my back to the woods, but I quickly shifted again so I was at more of an angle. That way I could see Eric better and still not be totally surprised if something came at us from the trees. Not all the fairies had left this world.

Eric shifted, too, so that he was on his side, propped up on one elbow, his long blond hair falling such that it obscured the left side of his face. Part of me wanted to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, but another part of me, the stronger part, didn't want to distract him. It wasn't often that he shared anything from when he was alive.

"My mother used to brew beer. As I remember, it was quite good."

"I thought Vikings drank ale or mead." Not that I knew all that much about Vikings, but Amelia _had_ shown me how to use Google. "Wait a minute. Your _mother_?" A big grin spread across my face, not the nervous grin I usually wore, but more a delighted grin. "Around here, brewing beer is Man Business."

"In my time, it was Woman Business."

"Because you men were too busy beating on each other?"

He laughed; Eric loved nothing more than a good fight. "Yes." He swung around to sit facing me, folding his long legs into a pretzel shape. When I was little, the way he sat was called "Indian style." I wondered if it was called "Native American style" these days. "My parents grew hops and wheat on their farm." A slight frown wrinkled his forehead. It must really be hard work to remember back over a thousand years. "I liked her bread, too, fresh from the ovens."

The breeze picked up again, rustling through the leaves on the trees, teasing at stray hairs to tickle my cheeks and ears, my neck. I shivered, a little chilly now, what with the fresh breeze and since the sun no longer warmed the air or the grassy ground on which we sat. I pulled my knees up and crossed my ankles, wrapped my arms around my bare legs. I was reluctant to go in for the night, it was still so nice out, but maybe I could go in and change my shorts for some sweats…

"Are you cold?" Eric asked me and just like that, he was behind me, pulling me into his lap and wrapping his arms around me. "I'm very happy to warm you," he whispered, his lips a feather touch against my right ear. He nipped lightly at the lobe. I shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with any kind of chill.

It had been weeks since he'd touched me like this, with carnal intent. At first, even with the help of his blood in healing me, I'd been too sore, too damaged to even think about sex and then Victor Madden had kept Eric hopping on behalf of Louisiana's new vamp king, Felipe de Castro. And of course, as I grew stronger, Sam gave me as many hours as I could handle (or he thought I could handle) at Merlotte's. What with one thing and another, there just hadn't been any time, even if there had been inclination. Now, though…

Just in case Eric had any thought of being a gentleman (ha!), I shifted very deliberately in his lap (and stifled a laugh when he sucked in a completely unnecessary breath because of it). I put my arms around his neck, exerted some pressure until he got the hint and lowered his head, and I kissed him. It wasn't any tentative little kiss, either. The kiss I planted on those cool lips meant business and he returned it with interest. Oh, boy, did he ever.

That kiss seemed to go on forever. I couldn't get enough of the taste of Eric. Salty and sweet, he tasted of eternity, and in a lot of ways, that scared the hell out of me. He'd lived a thousand years and he could easily live a thousand more and where did I fit into all that time? I was nothing more than a tiny footnote in a history like that. I mean, he had a really hard time just remembering what it was like to be human and here I was, about as human as a person could get. Well, mostly, anyway. Fairy heritage notwithstanding.

All that took more time to tell than it did to think, but I was freaking myself out a little and I must've made a sound or stiffened up for a second or something, because that salty-sweet kiss ended and he pulled back. I made a mewling sound of protest. Kind of embarrassing.

He must have thought he'd caused me pain. He pushed himself up (somehow or other, we'd ended up flat on the grass, with him on top of me), but before he could pull away from me entirely, I reached out and caught his wrist, held on. "Don't go," I said. And sure, he could've broken free; there isn't a human alive who could physically hold a vampire someplace if he didn't want to be held. But he didn't. Break away, that is. Instead, he twisted his wrist until my hand was engulfed in his and in one fluid motion, he was on his feet and me with him.

We stood so close there was only the space of a breath between us. He stroked his thumb across my lower lip, then tilted my head up to look at him. I didn't know what he was thinking, which is usually a good thing for me, but just then I was about ready to cry. And he knew it, too. "Hush, lover," he said softly, his tongue following the path his thumb had taken a moment before. "I'm not going anywhere." I felt the scrape of his fangs against my lips. "I don't want to hurt you."

I stepped in closer so there wasn't even any room for that breath between our bodies. "I'll let you know if you're hurting me." I grazed my teeth across his collarbone and he hissed, his hands coming to rest on my hips.

The next thing I knew, he was carrying me up the steps to my screened in back porch and through the back door and then the kitchen. He didn't stop until he lay me down on my bed, didn't say a word as he stripped off his t-shirt. And then there just wasn't any more room for words.

Our bodies said everything we needed to say.


End file.
